<blockquote>...people who choose to smoke...</blockquote>
You mean people who got sucked in by tobacco company marketing and peer pressure as kids and then found themselves hooked as adults, just as the tobacco companies intended? If we had a government-run single payer system, the government could simply bill the tobacco companies annually for the money it spent on care for tobacco-related illnesses, plus a suitable multiple of those companies' marketing budgets. That would be a more humane and more just solution, and one that would help more to get rid of smoking altogether, than simply withholding coverage from smokers.
<blockquote>...get unnecessary abortions...</blockquote>
Who'll pass judgment on which abortions are "unnecessary," some committee of James Dobson clones? You'd better hope not, unless you as a taxpayer are willing to foot the bill for the many times larger social services costs the unwilling and likely unprepared mother will require for years to come. Oh, and you might want to stop covering Viagra but not contraception as well.
If you don't get the logic, let me give you a little help here. "Government" is your money, taxpayers money. It's all your money, whether it comes from your taxes or your individual pocket. So it's your money that pays for health care, however you look at it.
The difference is that if you demand that "government" (you, directly) pay for health care, as the Brits, Canadians, Taiwanese, French, Japanese, etc. etc. etc., do, you won't be paying 20 cents (actually, Wendell, I am sure you know that it is often up to 50) out of each dollar to push paper around to divide people up into pools, plans, marketing, etc. to make sure that they never enroll those annoying and unprofitable sick people. And the high CEO salaries that Wendell used to have. Ah! And also those extraordinary prices we pay to Big Pharma because we lack the collective purchasing power that patients in other countries have.
And that is for starters some of the things that you get when you "pool risks" through a fully publicly financed system (for medically necessary services, I have no problem allowing insurers to make money from somebody's unhappiness with their nose that leads them to a cosmetic surgeon).
That much better use of your money is what you get once you give up on the myth that comparative shopping for health care policies is no different from comparative shopping for laptops, or designer shoes.
Okay, okay, not that simple. I agree that to make a full case you need more details. So here they go:
http://blogs.kqed.org/healthyideas/2009/05/20/the-elephant-in-the-room/
But believe me, the last thing we need is yet another garden variety of a "uniquely American solution". So I must disagree with Wendell that a public option will get us anywhere.
After all the horrible things we've always suspected or known about for profit insurers (and that Wendell so courageously has confirmed), why would anybody want them to be in charge of our health care at all? Why not just have Medicare for All?
Dear Mr. "My Hero" Potter,
I was becoming faint with the onslaught of Snakes and Jellyfish in the Menagerie swarming slitherily around putative health care reform. Then I saw you on Bill Moyers & The Ed Show and feel awash with joy. I only wish you could be chained to your blog & tv until folks <i>get</i> the degree of catastrophe of our medical-industrial-complex insurance corporation-dominated ATM-for-Them 'system.'
The medical-industrial-complex insurance corporation, MICIC (mick-ick), 'system' has slid from gruesomely sad-&-bad into evil.
They have put rapacious Wall Street and medical-loss-ratios between any of us and our doctor. I paraphrase you saying that their stock price depends acutely on <i>how many people they can rescind, purge, or force into fake insurance.</i> They win by their customers losing. It is revolting. It is capitalism gone odiously amuck.
The equivalent of every child, woman, and man in the whole states of Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia have <i>zero</i> health coverage in our USofA. This. is. shamefull.
<i>Wendell Rocks</i> is on my teeshirt. Keep your heart bright and keep talking & blogging, I implore you.
Mr. Potter:
Thank you for so clearly laying out the connection between Wall Street and the insurance industry on "Bill Moyers' Journal" and "Democracy Now". We have seen so many instances of the short-term mentality leading to disastrous public policy decisions. There is too much at stake to allow financiers to warp this initiative. Our health care system is our international shame. The rest of the civilized world has recognized the fundamental right of the individual to decent health care-- it's time the United States got on board. Your courage in speaking out is an invaluable contribution to this process. Thank you again.
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